XI

The Voyage of the Mona

THERE
was the Mona, Yeo's boat,
below the quay wall; but I could not see her
owner. The unequal stones of that wall have the
weathered appearance of a natural outcrop of rock,
for they were matured by the traffic of ships when
America was a new yarn among sailors. They are
the very stones one would choose to hear speak.
Yet the light of early morning in that spacious
estuary was so young and tenuous that you could
suppose this heavy planet had not yet known the
stains of night and evil; and the
Mona, it must be remembered, is white
without and egg-blue within. Such were the
reflections she made, lively at anchor on the
swirls of a flood-tide bright enough for the
sea-bottom to have been luminous, that I felt I
must find Yeo. The white houses of the village,
with shining faces, were looking out to sea.

Another man, a visitor from the cities of the
plains, was gazing down with appreciation at the
Mona. There was that to his credit.
His young wife, slight and sad, and in the dress
of the promenade of a London park, was with him.
She was not looking on the quickness of the lucent
tide, but at the end of a parasol, which was idly
marking the grits. I had seen the couple about
the village for a week. He was big, ruddy,
middle-aged, and lusty. His neck ran straight up
into his round head, and its stiff prickles
glittered like short ends of brass wire. It was
easy to guess of him, without knowing him and
therefore unfairly, that, if his wife actually
confessed to him that she loved another man, he
would not have believed her; because how was it
possible for her to do that, he being what he was?
His aggressive face, and his air of confident
possession, the unconscious immodesty of the man
because of his important success at some
unimportant thing or other, seemed an offence in
the ancient tranquillity of that place, where poor
men acknowledged only the sea, the sun, and the
winds.

I found Yeo at the end of the quay, where
round the corner to seaward open out the dunes of
the opposite shore of the estuary, faint with
distance and their own pallor, and ending in the
slender stalk of a lighthouse, always quivering at
the vastness of what confronts it. Yeo was
sitting on a bollard, rubbing tobacco between his
palms. I told him this was the sort of morning to
get the Mona out. He carefully
poured the grains into the bowl of his pipe,
stoppered it, glanced slowly about the brightness
of the river mouth, and shook his head. This was
a great surprise, and anybody who did not know Yeo
would have questioned him. But it was certain he
knew his business. There is not a more deceptive
and difficult stretch of coast round these
islands, and Yeo was born to it. He stood up, and
his long black hair stirred in the breeze under
the broad brim of a grey hat he insists on
wearing. The soft hat and his lank hair make him
womanish in profile, in spite of a body to which a
blue jersey does full justice, and the sea-boots
but when he turns his face to you, with his light
eyes and his dark and leathery face, you feel he
is strangely masculine and wise, and must be
addressed with care and not as most men. He
rarely smiles when a foolish word is spoken or
when he is contradicted boldly by the innocent.
He spits at his feet and contemplates the sea, as
though he had heard nothing.

The visitor came up, followed reluctantly by
his wife. "Are you Yeo? How are you, Yeo?
What about a sail? I want you to take us round to
Pebblecombe."

That village is over the bar and across the
bay. Yeo looked at the man, and shook his head.

"Why not?" asked the visitor
sharply, as though he were addressing the
reluctance of the driver of his own car.
The sailor pointed a stern finger seawards, to
where the bar is shown in charts, but where all we
could make out was the flashing of inconstant
white lines.

"Well?" questioned the man, who glanced
out there perfunctorily. "What of it?"

"Look at it," mildly insisted the sailor,
speaking for the first time. "Isn't the sea
like a wall?" The man's wife, who was
regarding Yeo's placid face with melancholy
attention, turned to her husband and placed a hand
of nervous deprecation on his arm. He did not
look at her.

"Oh, of course, if you don't want to go,
if you don't want to go . . ." said the
visitor, shaking his head as though at rubbish,
and rising several times on his toes.
"Perhaps you've a better job," he added, with
an unpleasant smile.

"I'm ready to go if you are, sir,"
said Yeo, "but I shall have to take my friend
with me." The sailor nodded my way.

The man did not look at me. I was not there to
him. He gave an impatient jerk to his head.
"Ready to go? Of course I'm ready to go! Of
course. Why do you suppose I asked?"

Yeo went indoors, came out with a bundle of
tarpaulins for us, and began moving with
deliberation along to the Mona.
Something was said by the woman behind us, but so
quietly I did not catch it. Her husband made
confident noises of amusement, and replied in
French that it was always the way with these local
folk--always the way. The result, I gathered, of
a slow life, though that was hardly the way he put
it. Nothing in it, she could be sure. These
difficulties were made to raise the price. The
morning was beautiful. Still, if she did not want
to go . . . .
. if she did not want to go. And his tone was
that perhaps she would be as absurd as that. I
heard no more, and both followed us.

I got out to the Mona, cast off
her stern mooring, got in the anchor, and the pull
on that brought us to the stone steps of the
landing-stage. While I made the seats ready for
the voyagers and handed them in, Yeo took two
reefs in the lugsail (an act which seemed, I must
say, with what wind we felt there, to be carrying
his prescience to bold lengths) and hauled the
sail to its place. I went forward to lower the
centre keel as he came aft with the sheet in his
hand. The Mona sidled away, stood
out, and then reached for the distant sandhills.
The village diminished and concentrated under its
hill.

When clear of the shelter of the hill, on the
lee foot of which the village shelters from the
westerly winds, the Mona went over
suddenly in a gust which put her gunwale in the
wash and kept it there. The dipper came adrift
and rattled over. Yeo eased her a bit, and his
uncanny eyes never shifted from their fixed
scrutiny ahead. Our passenger laughed aloud, for
his wife had grasped him at the unexpected
movement and the noise. That's nothing," he
assured her. "This is fine."

We cleared the shallows and were in the channel
where the weight of the incoming tide raced and
climbed. The Mona's light bows,
meeting the tide, danced ecstatically, sending
over us showers which caught in the foot of the
sail. The weather in the open was bright and
hard, and the sun lost a little of its warmth in
the wind, which was north of west. The dunes,
which had been evanescent through distance in the
wind and light, grew material and great. The
combers, breaking diagonally along that forsaken
beach, had something ominous to say of the bar.
Even I knew that, and turned to look ahead. Out
there, across and above the burnished sea, a
regular series of long shadowy walls were forming.
They advanced slowly, grew darker, and grew
higher; then in their parapets appeared arcs of
white, and at once, where those lines of sombre
shadows had been, there were plunging strata of
white clouds. Other dark bands advanced from
seaward continuously. There was a tremor and
sound as of the shock and roll of far thunder.

We went about again, steering for the first
outward mark of the fairway, the Mullet Buoy.
Only the last house of the village was now looking
at us remotely, a tiny white cube which frequently
sank, on its precarious ledge of earth, beneath an
intervening upheaval of the waters. The sea was
superior now, as we saw the world from our little
boat. The waters moved in from the outer with the
ease of certain conquest, and the foundering
shores vanished under each uplifted send of the
ocean. We rounded the buoy. I could see the tide
holding it down aslant with heavy strands of
water, stretched and taut. About we went again
for the lifeboat-house.

There was no doubt of it now. We should be
baling soon. Yeo, with one brown paw on the sheet
and the other on the tiller, had not moved, nor
even, so he looked, blinked the strange,
unfrowning eyes peering from under the brim of his
hat. The Mona came on an even keel
by the lifeboat-house, shook her wing for a moment
as though in delight, and was off again dancing
for the Mid Buoy. She was a live, responsive, and
happy bird. "Now, Yeo," said the
passenger beside the sailor, beaming in proper
enjoyment of this quick and radiant experience.
"Didn't I tell you so? What's the matter
with this?"

There was nothing the matter with
that. The sea was blue and white. The frail
coast, now far away, was of green and gold.
The sky was the assurance of continued good. Our
boat was buoyant energy. That bay, when in its
uplifted and sparkling mood, with the extent of
its liberty and the coloured promise of its
romantic adventure, has no hint at all of the
startling suddenness of its shadow, that presage
of its complex and impersonal malice.

Yeo turned the big features of his impassive
face to his passenger, looked at him as he would
at a wilful and ill-mannered child, and said,
"In five minutes we shall be round the Mid
Buoy. Better go back. If you want to go back,
say so now. Soon you won't be able to. We may be
kept out. If we are, don't blame me."

"Oh, go on, you," the man said,
smiling indulgently. He was not going to
relinquish the fine gift of this splendid time.

Yeo put his pipe in his mouth and resumed his
stare outwards. He said no more.
On we went, skimming over in-flowing ridges
with exhilarating undulations, light as a
sandpiper. It was really right to call that a
glorious morning. I heard the curlews fluting
among the stones of the Morte Bank, which must
then have been almost awash; but I did not look
that way, for the nearing view of the big seas
breaking ahead of us fixed my mind with the first
intentness of anxiety. Though near the top of the
flood, the fairway could not be made out. What
from the distance had appeared orderly ranks of
surf had become a convulsive wilderness of foam,
piled and dazzling, the incontinent smother of a
heavy ground swell; for after all, though the wind
needed watching, it was nothing much. The
Mona danced on towards the anxious
place. Except the distant hills there was no
shore. Our hills were of water now we neared the
bar. They appeared ahead with surprising
suddenness, came straight at us as though they had
been looking for us, and the discovery made them
eager; and then, when the head of the living mass
was looking over our boat, it swung under us.

We were beyond the bar before we knew
it. There were a few minutes when, on either
hand of the Mona, but not near enough
to be more than an arresting spectacle, ponderous
glassy billows ceaselessly arose, projected
wonderful curves of translucent
parapets which threw shadows ahead of their
deliberate advance, lost their delicate poise,
and became plunging fields of blinding and
hissing snow. We sped past them and were at sea.
Yeo's knowledge of his work gives him more than
the dexterity which overcomes difficulties as it
meets them; it gives him the prescience to avoid
them.

The steady breeze carried away from us the
noise of that great tumult on the bar, and here
was a sunny quietude where we heard nothing but
the wing of the Mona when it
fluttered. The last of the land was the Bar Buoy,
weltering and tolling erratically its melancholy
bell in its huge red cage. That dropped astern.
The Mona, as though she had been
exuberant with joy at the promise of release, had
come out with whoops and a fuss, but, being
outside, settled down to enjoy liberty in quiet
content. The little lady with us, for the first
time, appeared not sorry to be there. The boat
was dry. The scoured thwarts were even hot to the
touch. Our lady held the brim of her big straw
hat, looking out over the slow rhythm of the heavy
but unbroken seas, the deep suspirations of the
ocean, and there was even a smile on her delicate
face. She crouched forward no longer, and did not
show that timid hesitation between her fear of
sudden ugly water, when she would have inclined to
her husband's side, and her evident nervousness
also of her mate. She sat erect, enjoying the
slow uplift and descent of the boat with a
responsive body. She gazed overside into the
transparent deeps, where large jelly-fish dimmered
like sunken moons. I got out my pipe. This
suggested something to our other passenger, and he
got out his. He fumbled out his pouch and filled
up. He then regarded the loaded pipe
thoughtfully, but presently put it away, and
leaned forward, gazing at the bottom of the boat.
I caught Yeo's eye in a very solemn wink.

The Mona, lost in the waste,
coursed without apparent purpose. Sometimes for a
drowsy while we headed into the great light
shining from all the Atlantic which stretched
before us to America; and again we turned to the
coast, which was low and far beyond mounting seas.
By watching one mark ashore, a grey blur which was
really the tower of a familiar village church, it
was clear Yeo was not making Pebblecombe with any
ease. I glanced at him, and he shook his head.
He then nodded it towards the western headland of
the bay.

That was almost veiled by a dark curtain,
though not long before the partitioned fields and
colours of its upper slopes were clear as a
mosaic; so insidiously, to the uninitiated, do the
moods of this bay change. Our lady was at this
moment bending solicitously towards her husband,
whose head was in his hands. But he shook her
off, turning away with a face not quite so proud
as it had been, for its complexion had become that
of a green canary's. He had acquired an
expression of holiness, contemplative and
sorrowful. The western coast had disappeared in
the murk. "Better have something to eat
now," said Yeo, "while there's a
chance."

The lady, after a hesitating glance at her
husband, who made no sign, his face being hidden
in his arms, got out the luncheon-basket. He
looked up once with a face full of misery and
reproach, and said, forgetting the past with
boldness, "Don't you think we'd better be
getting back? It's looking very dark over
there."

Yeo munched with calm for a while, swallowed,
and then remarked, while conning the headland,
"It'll be darker yet, and then we shan't go
back, because we can't."

The Mona continuously soared
upwards on the hills and sank again, often
trembling now, for the impact of the seas was
sharper. The man got into the bottom of the boat
and groaned.

Light clouds, the feathery growth of the
threatening obscurity which had hidden the western
land, first spread to dim the light of the sun,
then grew thick and dark overhead too, leaving us,
after one ray that sought us out again and at once
died, in a chill gloom. The glassy seas at once
became opaque and bleak. Their surface was
roughened with gusts. The delicate colours of
the world, its hopeful spaciousness, its dancing
light, the high blue vault, abruptly changed to
the dim, cold, restricted outlook of age. We
waited.

As Yeo luffed the squall fell on us bodily with
a great weight of wind and white rain, pressing us
into the sea. The Mona made
ineffective leaps, trying to get release from her
imprisonment, but only succeeded in pouring water
over the inert figure lying on the bottom boards.
In a spasm of fear he sprang up and began to
scramble wildly towards his wife, who in her
nervousness was gripping the gunwale, but was
facing the affair silently and pluckily.
"Keep still there!" peremptorily ordered the
sailor; and the man bundled down without a word,
like a dog, an abject heap of wet rags.

The first weight of the squall was released.
The Mona eased. But the rain set in
with steadiness and definition. Nothing was in
sight but the waves shaping in the murk and
passing us, and the blurred outline of a ketch
labouring under reduced canvas to leeward. The
bundle on the boat's floor sat up painfully and
glanced over the gunwale. He made no attempt to
disguise his complete defeat by our circumstances.
He saw the ketch, saw she was bigger, and humbly
and loudly implored Yeo to put him aboard. He did
not look at his wife. His misery was in full
possession of him. When near to the ketch we saw
something was wrong with a flag she was flying.
We got round to her lee quarter and hailed the
three muffled figures on her deck.

"Can we come aboard?" roared Yeo.

One of the figures came to the ship's side and
leaned over. "All right," we heard,
"if you don't mind sailing with a corpse."

Yeo put it to his passengers. The woman said
nothing. Her pale face, pitifully tiny and
appealing within a sailor's tarpaulin hat, showed
an innocent mind startled by the brutality of a
world she did not know, but a mind controlled and
alert. You could guess she expected nothing now
but the worst, and had been schooling herself to
face it. Her husband, when he knew what was on
that ship, repudiated the vessel with horror. Yet
we had no sooner fallen slightly away than he
looked up again, was reminded once more that she
stood so much higher than our boat, and cried,
"Yes, yes!"

The two craft imperceptibly approached, as by
gravitation. The men of the ketch saw we had
changed our minds, and made ready to receive us.
On one noisy uplift of a wave we got the lady
inboard. Waiting another opportunity, floundering
about below the black wall of the ship, presently
it came, and we shoved over just anyhow the
helpless bulk of the man. He disappeared within
the ship like a shapeless sack, and bumped like
one. When I got over, I saw the
Mona's mast, which was thrusting and
falling by the side of the ketch, making wild
oscillations and eccentrics, suddenly vanish; and
then appeared Yeo, who carried a tow-line aft and
made fast.

The skipper of the ketch had been drowned, we
were told. They were bringing his body home. The
helmsman indicated a form lashed in a sailcloth to
the hatch. They were standing on and off, waiting
to get in over the bar. Yeo they knew so well
that hardly any words passed between them. They
were glad to put the piloting in his hands. He
took the wheel of the Judy of Padstow.

The substantial deck of the Judy was a great
relief after the dizzy gyrations of the aerial
Mona; and our lady, with a
half-glance at what on the hatch was so grimly
indifferent to all that could happen now, even
smiled again, perhaps with a new sense of safety.
She saw her husband settled in a place not too
wet, and got about the venerable boards of the
Judy, looking at the old gear with curiosity,
glancing, with her head dropped back, into the
dark intricacy of rigging upheld by the ponderous
mainmast as it swayed back and forth. Every time
the men went hurriedly trampling to some point of
the running gear she watched what they were at.
For hours we beat about, in a great noise of
waters, waiting for that opportunity at the
entrance to home and comfort. Once Yeo took us as
far towards the vague mist of surf as the dismal
tolling of the Bar Buoy, but evidently did not
like the look of it, and stood out again.

At last, having decided, he shouted orders,
there was a burst of activity, and we headed for
the bad place. Soon we should know.

The Judy began to plunge alarmingly. The
incoming rollers at times swept her along with a
rush, and Yeo had his hands full. Her bowsprit
yawed, rose and fell hurriedly, the Judy's
unsteady dexter pointing in nervous excitement at
what was ahead of her. But Yeo held her to it,
though those heavy following seas so demoralised
the Judy that it was clear it was all Yeo could do
to keep her to her course. Columns of spray
exploded ahead, driving in on us like shot.

"Look out!" cried Yeo. I looked.
Astern was a grey hill, high over us, fast
overtaking us, the white turmoil of its summit
already streaming down its long slope. It
accelerated, as if it could see it would soon be
too late. It nearly was, but not quite. A
cataract roared over the poop, and Yeo vanished.
The Judy, in a panic, made an attempt at a move
which would have been fatal then; but she was
checked and her head steadied. I could do nothing
but hold the lady firm and grasp a pin in its
rail. The flood swept us, brawling round the
gear, foundering the hatch. For a moment I
thought it was a case, and saw nothing but
maniacal water. Then the foam subsided to clear
torrents which flung about violently with the
ship's movement. The men were in the rigging.
Yeo was rigid at the wheel, his eyes on the
future. I could not see the other passenger till
his wife screamed, and then I saw him. Two
figures rolled in a flood that was pouring
to the canting of the deck, and one of them
desperately clutched at the other for aid. But
the other was the dead skipper, washed from his
place on the hatch.

We were over the bar again, and the deck became
level. But it remained the bottom of a shallow
well in which floated with indifference the
one-time master of the Judy, face downwards, and
who presently stranded amidships. Our passenger
reclined on the vacated hatch, his eyes wide with
childish and unspoken terror, and fixed on his
wife, whose ministering hands he fumbled for as
does a child for his mother's when he wakes at
night after a dream of evil.